Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson, Yolanda Adams,Joan Baez and other musicial luminaries performed at the White House yesterday in a program focusing on the music of the American civil rights movement.
The show was the fifth in series of programs the White House has staged to celebrate American music. The performance featured Dylan, Yolanda Adams, Joan Baez, Natalie Cole, Jennifer Hudson, John Mellencamp, Bernice Johnson Reagon, Smokey Robinson, the Blind Boys of Alabama and others.
One of the standout performances of the night was by Smokey Robinson, who sang “Abraham, Martin & John.”
“Has anybody here seen my old friend Martin?” Robinson sang. “Can you tell me where he’s gone?/ He freed a lot of people but it seems the good die young.”
Bob Dylan's performance of "Times They Are A-Changin'" can be heard here.
More details here
The performances will be televised on “In Performance at the White House: A Celebration of Music from the Civil Rights Movement,” a special that will air on PBS this evening, February 11 at 8 p.m. ET.
Ideas in Art, culture, technology, politics and life-- In Brooklyn or Beacon NY -- and Beyond (anyway, somewhere beginning with a "B")
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Aftermath of the Snowpocalypse
Although I tried to keep on the snow shoveling all day yesterday, by last night, when we tried to dig out My Better Half's car, it was clear that today was going to be "The Aftermath of the Snowpocalypse." We dug for 2 hours but it was still tough going, and that was just to get out of the driveway.
My Better Half works as a teacher in Bushwick-East New York, so, since the City saw fit to reopen the schools, what is normally a complicated drive through Brooklyn to the edge of the borough, was, this morning, an earlier than usual shlepp through snow-covered streets so she could take two buses for an hour and a half ride to get to her school. After she was at the bus stop, I got on the subway for a comparably uneventful ride to downtown Brooklyn. Many of the subway cars were partly empty, both because a lot of folks were either arriving late/not bothering to come in at all, or because each car seemed to have its Homeless-Person-in-Residence.
Today, the NY Times also reported on the continuing controversy over global warming. Some scientists say that far from contradicting global warming, the increasing frequency of weather extremes like the storms we had yesterday and that Washington had last week are a by-product of this creeping climate shift. Keep those shovels handy.
My Better Half works as a teacher in Bushwick-East New York, so, since the City saw fit to reopen the schools, what is normally a complicated drive through Brooklyn to the edge of the borough, was, this morning, an earlier than usual shlepp through snow-covered streets so she could take two buses for an hour and a half ride to get to her school. After she was at the bus stop, I got on the subway for a comparably uneventful ride to downtown Brooklyn. Many of the subway cars were partly empty, both because a lot of folks were either arriving late/not bothering to come in at all, or because each car seemed to have its Homeless-Person-in-Residence.
Today, the NY Times also reported on the continuing controversy over global warming. Some scientists say that far from contradicting global warming, the increasing frequency of weather extremes like the storms we had yesterday and that Washington had last week are a by-product of this creeping climate shift. Keep those shovels handy.